


Pick Up

by SFDoll



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Death of a pet, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Minor Character Death, Sherlock Holmes Has Feelings, TFP Aftermath Fic, sherlolly oneshot, tissues recommended
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-18
Updated: 2017-03-18
Packaged: 2018-10-06 21:41:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10345143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SFDoll/pseuds/SFDoll
Summary: After Eurus's arrest Sherlock rushes to Molly's to make sure she's okay... and to fix the things he's broken.





	

Sherlock stared through the glass at the darkened windows of the houses they passed as Greg silently drove them back to John's. Sherlock wondered if Molly's flat would look much the same as any other sleeping household right now. Was she even home, or had she chosen to go somewhere far away from him after the events of their last phone conversation? Was she lying in bed, staring at the ceiling and quietly hating him? And were there—even now—cameras, silently watching everything that Molly did while she thought she was safely alone?

That final thought curdled the blood in his veins. It didn't matter if Eurus no longer was there to monitor them. They were still there—dead, black eyes still following Molly's every move. The violation of Molly's life, her privacy, her very feelings made him feel horrified, and a familiar fury stirred in his chest. “Greg,” Sherlock called softly, “There is something I have to do. I need you to take me to Molly's _now_. Drop John off first as we're practically there, but I _have_ to go to Molly's.”

“Sherlock-”

“I know what you're going to say John, but this is too important. It is _imperative_.” Sherlock cut in immediately, and the ragged edge in his voice was enough to halt any further protest. He could see the plain concern in his friend's eyes, and he knew all of the reasons he shouldn't go now. She knew none of what had happened, and, as she was in no danger, she hadn't been contacted by either the government or the police yet. She was hardly primed for him to show up on her doorstep. He wished that he could simply hide, but he knew that he could never hide again. Not from her. Certainly not from himself.

“You're right. I'll keep my cellphone close in case you need a ride later,” John told him, and Greg stared at them both through the rear-view mirror—his gaze both curious and worried.

“Something wrong with Molly?” Greg asked in a grave tone.

“Molly's completely safe,” Sherlock assured him, and he winced yet again at the horrible irony of Eurus's trick. He was profoundly grateful when John changed the subject and began distracting Greg with small talk.

The final leg of the car trip passed in silence, and Sherlock could vaguely hear Greg shouting “Are you sure about this?” at him as Sherlock nearly broke into a run on his way to Molly's door.

For a moment Sherlock froze, afraid that perhaps Molly wouldn't even be there and more afraid of what what might happen if she were. He took a deep breath to center himself, and then he rang the buzzer and began to knock heavily on the wooden portal. “Molly?! Molly, if you're there please open the door! Molly, I know it's the middle of the night, but it's _really_ important! Molly, _please_!” Sherlock's voice sounded raw in his own ears as a litany of desperate pleas issued from his lips.

He wasn't sure how much time passed before Molly's voice and footsteps reached the door. “Damn it, Sherlock! I'm tired of the games! It's three in the bloody-” She pulled open the door, her features a study in fury. Her long hair had been braided before going to bed, but soft tendrils had pulled free while she tossed and turned, and they framed her face like a halo. She wore an old black tee-shirt depicting two skeletons wearing flower crowns while dancing in a rain of roses and a pair of pink plaid pajama bottoms. Her eyes were pink and puffy. “So she had been crying,” Sherlock thought wincing to himself.

The anger drained out of her face as she looked up at Sherlock. His dark curls hung limp against his forehead. He stared back at her with eyes rounder and more unguarded than she had ever seen, and he kept opening his mouth as though struggling to say something. “-morning,” she finished in a small voice, not much more than a whisper.

They simply stood in the doorway staring at each other for several moments before Sherlock stormed into Molly's house, headed straight for her kitchen with its large sitting room, and began scanning their surroundings furiously. “Parts from a white chandelier visible in the foreground...” he muttered to himself. He climbed up on the leather sofa to reach the chandelier that hung over the coffee table in front of the fireplace.

“Sherlock, are you... are you using?” Molly shouted as Sherlock grabbed the offending light fixture and began examining the bases of the electric candles as though they had done him some great offense. With a snarl of triumph he pulled a small electronic gadget out of a candle base on one of the chandelier arms. Sherlock's jaw twitched as he looked at the tiny device.

“ _What is that?_ ” Molly asked, clutching her hands to her chest, wrinkling her nose, and staring at the tiny black thing in the palm of Sherlock's large hand.

“A spy camera,” he answered on a shaking breath. “One down. At least eight more to go. The fact that she used three to spy on your kitchen alone would imply more than nine if there are at least three in each of the major rooms... She would have used them for spying rather than just for today's...” his voice trailed off.

“She who? What the hell is going on?” Molly demanded. She remembered the strange call she had received from Sherlock that afternoon while standing in her kitchen. Cold dread spread like rising water from the pit of her stomach, and she frowned at the alien thought that somebody could possibly want to spy on her despite the physical proof of it under her very nose.

Sherlock dropped the camera on Molly's granite counter while stalking towards her refrigerator to remove another camera nestled in the leaves of a potted vanilla orchid perched above. He tossed it at the first. His eyes slid to the empty wine bottle still sitting by Molly's sink, but he made no comment about it when he replied. “My sister, Eurus. Criminally insane. She killed my best friend when we were children, and I apparently wrote her out of my memories,” Sherlock's breath hitched. He pulled another camera from above the doorframe that led back towards the living room and slammed it onto the counter with the growing pile.

Molly covered her mouth as if to muffle the tiny gasp of shock that had escaped her throat. Her eyes widened in fear and her cheeks grew pale... so pale that for a moment Sherlock could see Molly inside the looming specter of the coffin that he had reduced to so many splinters and scraps of fabric.

“She's back in custody. You're safe now,” Sherlock quickly promised, unable to bear the look of fear on Molly's face. He wanted to pull her into his arms and crush her against his chest until all their fears melted away, but that urge terrified him too. He stood before her like a schoolboy with shaking hands, barely restraining himself.

“Meaning I wasn't safe... earlier...,” Molly deduced in a slow and frightened voice.

“I was led to believe not,” Sherlock confirmed. “But my sister has a tendency of hiding the true intent of her games... of lying about the rules. I had to get you to say the release code within a set time, or she threatened to blow up your home. I couldn't let you know there was any kind of crisis. She'd already blown up part of my flat this morning and killed five people. I wouldn't risk your safety for anything, Molly Hooper.”

Sherlock took several steps closer. Molly's very presence was a light in a day filled with the deepest darkness, and he wanted desperately to bathe in the warmth of her, but he could see the same anguished look that Molly had unwittingly worn before him that afternoon. Sherlock swallowed audibly around the painful knot that had suddenly formed in his throat. “I have to find the rest of these cameras, before we talk further...” He caught himself taking a few more unconscious steps towards Molly, and he quickly turned and grabbed the nearest counter to steady himself while he concentrated on the best camera locations to target Molly's sitting room. “Tea?” he requested in a stiff voice, and Molly nearly dove for the kettle obviously needing something to occupy herself.

From the corners of her eyes Molly watched as Sherlock, muttering deductions to himself, whirled around her flat like a tornado hurling each spy camera he found into the growing debris field on her counter, and Molly nervously cleaned up after him while waiting for the kettle to boil. With each addition, Molly could see Sherlock's jaw twitch as his emotions wound tighter and tighter, until Molly feared that he was ready to unfurl his barely contained fury in a prodigious tantrum.

Despite her attempts at busyness, Molly's fears and doubts about their coming conversation clawed at her, winding her up in a similar fashion. That second breathless “I love you” had felt stabbingly honest, enough to finally wrest the words from her own throat, but Molly had been baffled at the complete lack of context. She'd mistaken his call for another game, and that had only fueled her defensiveness in the hours since they'd spoken, causing her to fight against her urge to trust in what she had heard in his voice. Then the entire conversation had merely become another source of pain in an already horrible day and evening.

Now Sherlock's strange behavior on the phone, his urgency and evasiveness, and his intensity since arriving on her doorstep were creating a vivid picture in her mind. Molly couldn't stop herself from replaying the day's events in her head and trying to imagine the afternoon from Sherlock's perspective.

Was it true? Sherlock had never been able to lie that convincingly before. Maybe Sherlock simply had been so terrified of losing another someone close to him after Mary's death that he'd found an untapped level of earnestness to prevent it from happening again? The crux of the problem was that Molly was terrified of accepting the idea that Sherlock had meant the words because of how long she'd been longing for him to reciprocate her feelings.

She'd had her own love for Sherlock locked inside her heart for years, while she'd tried everything to make peace with their status quo and find a way to move on from what had seemed a hopeless situation. Hell, even if Sherlock had meant every syllable, it didn't mean that he would choose to act upon those feelings. Perhaps his growing agitation stemmed from him preparing to break her heart by telling her that romance simply had no place in his dangerous lifestyle.

It actually struck her as the most likely scenario if the rest of her day were anything to go by, and she wiped angrily at a stray tear on her cheek while pushing down her re-surging pain. There were some events she was not ready to think about let alone relive at the moment.

Molly looked up from spooning sugar into Sherlock's tea to see the love of her life rifling through her cabinets looking for the bin bags, and then sweeping the pile of spy cameras into the plastic bag, and finally stalking out towards her back porch with her marble rolling pin in hand and a murderous expression on his face. She ignored the muffled sounds of mayhem filtering through the door as she finished squeezing lemon into her own cup, and by the time Sherlock reappeared she was seated in her overstuffed armchair and sipping from her favorite mug with his cup waiting for him on the coffee table.

Sherlock had his cellphone in his hands rapidly typing out a message. Both Molly's rolling pin and the bag of camera parts were conspicuously absent. Sherlock tucked his cellphone back into his coat pocket before shucking it and slinging it over the back of the chair in which Molly sat.

“I texted Stamford about the bomb threat, and he gave you the next four days off so that you can deal with any inquiries and still have a little rest before coming back to work. Also, I owe you you a new rolling pin. The old one met an untimely end,” Sherlock announced, and Molly wasn't sure whether to be angry at his highhandedness or grateful that he'd thought ahead to the fact that she was going to be in no shape to go into work in a few hours. Oh, God! Did this mean that Sherlock expected their conversation to be so terrible that she'd need days to recover?

“You're thinking too loudly,” Sherlock admonished. He sank into the brown leather of the couch with a heavy sigh, and Molly's heart ached at the exhaustion in his eyes and etched into every line of his face. He thanked her softly for the tea as he took a sip.

“You look like you're dead on your feet, Sherlock. Maybe we should wait until you've had a chance to sleep before doing this?” Molly suggested, and she could hear her nervous heartbeat thundering in her ears.

“Definitely not! And stop looking at me like you were facing a firing squad. I'm not here to say anything horrible, but I have quite a lot that I need to say that is going to be very difficult if you're spending the entire conversation flinching and expecting the worst,” Sherlock growled in frustration. He patted the cushion next to him, and Molly cautiously rose to join him.

“Okay... What was so important to say that you needed to barge into my house during the wee hours of the morning?” Molly asked letting her guard drop as he took her hands in his and squeezed them warmly, his eyes studying the way her fingers fit and laced together with his own.

Sherlock looked at her and then away again; and a moving picture show of emotions flickered across his face, frustration, anger, fear, longing, and beneath it all love. After several false starts Sherlock finally seemed to be able to find a starting point, his throat still struggling around the words as he began to speak in a hoarse voice.

“Molly... this afternoon when you first saw my name on your phone you didn't pick up...” Sherlock stammered, and Molly could feel her temper rising again.

“After all that happened today that's all you're on about?!” she demanded hotly, pulling her hands away from his and pushing him further away on the couch. “You're actually just upset because reliable old Molly wasn't waiting on hand for you! I was having a bad day, Sherlock! I'm allowed to have bad days!” She could feel the words mixing with her bitter disappointment , thick in her throat, and she felt as though she might choke on it. Hot tears were stinging her eyes, and she didn't want to cry in front of Sherlock at this moment.

“Of course you're allowed to have bad days!” Sherlock thundered back, and Molly realized that there were tears making their way down his cheeks. When he spoke again his voice was soft, thoughtful. “I've had some _stupendously_ bad days, Molly. Once I spent an entire day terrified that I was about to die, but _you_ were there for me... Unequivocally there for me... When I was shot in the chest you were the first person I saw in my mind palace. I never told you before, but you were the person walking me through the whole terrifying ordeal, the person again saving my life... I thought I was quite possibly going to die again on the day that you brought that ambulance for me.”

Sherlock's large hand raised to stroke her cheek affectionately, wiping a stray tear from the salty track winding its way down her flushed skin, and Molly instinctively held his hand in place as they stared into each other's eyes.

“On my worst days, Molly... On my very worst days... you are the person I want to talk to, the person I want to see,” Sherlock admitted. His eyes were still burning into her's, and Molly felt as though Sherlock were reaching inside of her chest once again and holding her very heart in his hands.

“Sherlock...” Molly breathed his name in disbelief. She leaned closer to him, as she saw his brows knit together and a look of pain enter his eyes as he fought for his next words.

“I didn't know why it bothered me so much at first... even when John gave me a vital clue about it. You're always happy, always lovely... but there you were standing in your kitchen looking sad when you thought nobody could see you and trying not to answer my call. When you did answer, you simply expected me to ask for whatever I wanted and then go away.”

Molly looked guilty at the truth of his words. She'd expected that from the start of the conversation. When the line had gone dead directly after Sherlock had finally gotten the words he'd been begging for from her, she'd angrily thought, “Of course.” She shifted uneasily, the leather sofa creaking its hushed complaints of her awkward movements. “I know you're appreciative of my help, Sherlock, but I am aware that...”

“No!” Sherlock protested sharply. His unruly curls bounced as he shook his head. “Today I realized all the ways that I've already botched things up, Molly Hooper. I assume that I can always rely on you to be there for me, and you assume that I won't be there for you because I've failed to be there for you. You _expect_ me to make a game of your feelings because that's how you already feel I've treated them. And if those bombs had been real...” Sherlock's hands gripped her shoulders painfully.

Sherlock had mentioned a time limit earlier, and for the first time Molly realized how close that timer must have been. Her stomach lurched at the thought, and she instinctively reached out for Sherlock to hold him close. To try to comfort him. Instead, Sherlock wrapped his arms around her and pulled her tight against his chest burying his face in her hair. Molly could smell the faded traces of his expensive cologne, a tang of smoke, hints of the sea, the mustiness of someplace long abandoned, and traces of gun oil about him. An entire day still clinging to his skin and clothes. “You didn't lose me, Sherlock.”

“It should never have been so close,” he replied tightly, “because what I said today was true.” He pulled back to look into Molly's doe-like eyes as she chewed her lower lip and stared up at him. “I love you, Molly Hooper. That's why I need to ask, 'Are you okay?' And don't just say that you are...”

Molly closed her eyes and took a deep breath as she tried to work free the cork on the emotions that she'd been fighting to control for most of the day. “I got a c-call from my neighbor today,” Molly began, pausing as a violent sob wracked her small frame. “She'd heard strange noises coming from my house. I rushed home to find Toby acting funny—restless and crying.”

For the first time Sherlock realized that he'd seen no sign of Molly's giant ginger cat tonight. He rubbed Molly's back soothingly and curled her against him again as she continued to speak. “Vet didn't think it looked good... W-wanted to keep him for obser(hic)vation. Was waiting for his call when we spoke.” Molly gripped the back of his jacket as she rode out another sob. “H-he's gone,” she wailed, and she finally let herself dissolve into a sobbing mess against Sherlock's neck as he rocked her gently and occasionally peppered kisses against her forehead and her hair while she cried herself out. And Sherlock silently cried with her, both for the horrors he'd experienced that day and for Molly's pain, until at length they fell into a drained and peaceful sleep in the comfort of each other's arms.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> When Sherlock mentions that there are at least 8 more cameras, I was referencing the fact that the camera feeds in Molly's home are numbered Cam01, Cam02, and Cam09. So I decided that Sherlock would have noticed this fact and deduced at least nine cameras, but probably more due to the number focused on her kitchen alone. 
> 
> I didn't intend it to turn out so sad, but something happened while I was writing. I decided that it was better ending it with Sherlock and Molly facing their emotional gut punches together, rather than letting them get over their grieving too quickly and inadvertently trivializing it. Now I have to go hug my kitties.


End file.
